Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Khodorkovsky

What do you want me to say? That Japanese prosecutors do not make their move until they are sure they have enough evidence to convict?

Poppycock.

As the TV Asahi announcer pointed out with barely disguised glee in the opening segment of last night's Hodo Station, the cells at the Kosuge Detention Center are unheated. Horie, Miyauchi, Okamoto and Nakamura can be held in detention for 23 days.

They are brave now.

But not for long.

One of them will soon crack from the cold, the isolation, the boredom and the hours and hours of interrogation.

He will sign a deposition, implicating the others.

The lawyers of the others will then encourage their clients to sign the depositions as well in order to end their torment and possibly win a reduction of their sentences.

You see, when the prosecutors marched into Livedoor on Monday a week ago, they had nothing.

They still have nothing.

They will never have enough physical evidence to convict. Horie and the others are too smart to leave even virtual traces of actionable behavior.

No, the suspects have to be broken.

That is why the prosecutors have moved so fast. To take Horie and the others down before they have arranged a management succession strategy for Livedoor and a defense strategy and common storyline for themselves.

Before the weather warms up enough to make 23 days in a metal box survivable.